Ileana Florescu's Light Boxes Rewrite Villa Medici's History

Ileana Florescu created seventeen light boxes for Villa Medici in Rome, commissioned by director Muriel Mayette-Holtz. The works reinterpret the villa's history through a geometric grid derived from garden designs, incorporating over 300 photographs from a journey tracing Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici's collections. Installed across the French Academy's spaces—including the Cardinal's apartments, Atelier del Bosco, Studiolo, and Gipsoteca—the light boxes function as hypertexts, layering images of flowers and plants as unifying elements. Curator Cristiano Leone notes the work merges micro and macro history, offering an alternative to facts. Florescu drew inspiration from a rare 16th-century manuscript by Giuseppe Casabona at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Pisa. The exhibition, titled Les Chambres du Jardin, ran in 2018.